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The JOTA Arduino Project

Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on low cost and
easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for anyone making
interactive projects.

Arduino interacts with the outside world by receiving inputs from
sensors attached to its input pins. It affects its surroundings by
controlling lights, audio, motors, and other actuators connected to its
output pins.

During 2015 the design of the next electronics project took a step in a
new and exciting direction. Instead of a simple circuit, what if we had
a computer? With a tiny budget in mind we started researching. The
Arduino Nano was inexpensive and a simple circuit could be addded with
some input and output devices.

A design with LEDs and a speaker for output, along with a switch,
potentiometer and light dependant resistor for inputs was put
together.

Once the hardware was decided, next came the software. Since most
scouts would not necessarily be progamming the device a multi-stage
program that demonstrated the different features was put together by
combining many different examples.

The JOTArduino was designed to be compatible with the Power House
Museum Thinker1 project. This was a simple design, aimed at school
students who would learn to program it in a lab environment. This gave
us access to a wide range of
sample programs and tutorials.

To further reduce the cost, a new variant of the Arduino was chosen, the
Arduino Nano. Find out more about the Arduino Nano.

Construction

These are photos showing the assembly of the board.
These are an earlier version where the Arduino Nano was soldered to the
circuit board, in the final version the Nano is plugged into a socket.